The iPhone 5 launch is rapidly approaching. At least we all think it is, Apple is famously secretive regarding new products: launching new iPhones, computers and whizz-bang devices on an (largely) unsuspecting public out of the nowhere. All this causes a tremendous amount of excitement amongst tech industry watchers as people worldwide speculate, theorize, imagine, and just plain make-up what the Cupertino-based company is really up to.

Speculation regarding the next-generation of iPhone is rampant, even though nobody is 100 per cent sure that Apple is even working on, let alone getting ready to launch a new iPhone model. After all, the iPhone 4S is still selling incredibly well. Having said that, we are pretty sure that Apple is ready to launch a fifth-generation of iPhone this year, and we're reasonbly confident that it'll come between the months of June and September.

How can we be so sure? Well partly it's legacy, Apple has launched a new iPhone around June to September since 2007, slowly introducing new features like the Retina-display, HD-cameras, and Siri to gradually ensure each model is better than the last. This encourages current owners to upgrade to a new phone, gets new people leaving their contracts to choose an iPhone over another model, and prevents people from jumping ship to another handset like Android (perish the thought). We've also heard reports from retail that Apple is scaling back production of the iPhone 4S, even though it is still selling well. And although the iPhone 4S is as damn near perfect a phone that we can think of, there's no reason to believe Apple won't release an even better model this year.

Apple itself has kept exceptionally quiet (as usual) about any new features. Even so, there's plenty of information (and misinformation) as to what direction the iPhone is going in. Apple has been investing in companies and taking patents in technologies like Liquidmetal, waterproofing technology, iWallet payment systems, solar powered screens, screens with antenna technology, OLED screens, haptic feedback, 3D displays, and more. All of this shows the type of technology Apple is thinking about, it's just a question of what technology it decides to use, which device, and when.

So welcome to the wonderful world of iPhone speculation. Trying to second-guess Apple's every next move is an obsession of ours (and many other tech pundits). We've scoured the patents, analyzed the business deals, and spent a lot of time scouring some of the more remote, and potentially reliable, sources (typically those based in China that are close to the manufacture of the upcoming device). There's also we admit a fair amount of 'finger-in-the-air' guesswork, but these are the features we think you can look forward to in the next generation of iPhone.